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Introduction

This is the last of Poulenc’s song cycles; it was composed for the soprano Denise Duval (b1921) who, after the retirement of Bernac, had become the composer’s recital partner, his Blanche in the opera Dialogues des Carmélites, his Elle in La voix humaine, his beloved friend and confidante, and in many respects his muse. Duval, unlike Bernac, was not a lieder or mélodie singer pur sang (she was perhaps happier on the opera stage) and she gave recitals with Poulenc at the piano that included operatic extracts (he referred to her as ‘La Diva’). This cycle indicates a new direction, as if Poulenc was beginning to groom her more specifically for song, and that he was being careful not to compose anything too demandingly esoteric. It was dedicated to the singer and her six year-old son, Richard Schilling. The poems (halfway between Francis Jammes and Max Jacob, according to Poulenc in JdmM) are taken from two whimsical collections by the Belgian poet Maurice Carême (1899–1978): i, ii, iv and vi from La cage aux grillons and iii, v and vii from Le voleur d’étincelles.

Le sommeil is an exasperated text (a mother whose child will not go to sleep) set very gently to music. The late Poulenc song style is somewhat thinner than in the glorious ’30s and ’40s, fewer notes on the pages, less effulgent chords, but it is always elegant, and irreproachable in terms of prosody. Quelle aventure! and Ba, be, bi, bo, bu are both madcap, music-hall Poulenc, the reworking of an old, breathless style to charming effect. La reine de cœur is perhaps the jewel of the set, simple and unpretentious, heartfelt and with a pace and depth that only this composer could muster, a shadow of past splendours perhaps, but an authentic one. It is a song that Régine Crespin recorded magically. Les anges musiciens, with its reference to the half-day holiday on Thursdays in French schools, is notable for its mention of Mozart, and the way that Poulenc subtly suggests the melodic contours of the slow movement (Romanze) in B flat major of the D minor Piano Concerto K466. Le carafon is a charming little ballad featuring the magician Merlin, an old phonograph, a baby giraffe and finally a baby carafe. Poulenc handles this whimsy with delicate mastery. The final song in the set, Lune d’avril, is very much a work from 1960 with its mention of nuclear disarmament, a major theme of the time for parents of young children. The composer was father of a fourteen year-old daughter, although very few people knew about her at the time. Poulenc’s farewell to song trails into the distance with one of his longest, yet least eventful, postludes, its C major tonality and hypnotic pace finally melting into a voluptuous dominant seventh. The addition of that crucial and luxuriously decadent B flat in the final chord adds a haunting, questioning resonance. At that very moment Poulenc’s life’s work as a great song composer fades away with the indication pppp. ‘The taste for this musical form is coming to an end, so I am told’, he wrote in JdmM. ‘So much the worse. Long live Schubert, Schumann, Musorgsky, Chabrier, Debussy, etc, … etc …’

Recordings

Graham Johnson is simply the greatest living authority on French song; an artist whose innate feeling for the music is combined with prodigious scholarship. Following his many wonderful recordings in Hyperion’s French Song Edition, Johnson turns t ...» More

This release marks the first in a new series charting the complete songs of Francis Poulenc, performed by some of the greatest singers of the day and accompanied by the exceptional Malcolm Martineau. Later volumes will feature several works that h ...» More

‘Why, complained the carafe,
should I not have a baby carafe?
At the zoo, Madame the giraffe
has she not a baby giraffe?’
A sorcerer who happened to be passing by,
astride a phonograph,
recorded the lovely soprano voice
of the carafe
and let Merlin hear it.
‘Very good’, said he, ‘very good.’
He clapped his hands three times
and the lady of the house
still asks herself why
she found that very morning
a pretty little baby carafe
nestling close to the carafe
just as in the zoo, the baby giraffe
rests its long fragile neck
against the pale flank of the giraffe.

‘Why, complained the carafe,
should I not have a baby carafe?
At the zoo, Madame the giraffe
has she not a baby giraffe?’
A sorcerer who happened to be passing by,
astride a phonograph,
recorded the lovely soprano voice
of the carafe
and let Merlin hear it.
‘Very good,’ said he, ‘very good.’
He clapped his hands three times
and the lady of the house
still asks herself why
she found that very morning
a pretty little baby carafe
nestling close to the carafe
just as in the zoo, the baby giraffe
rests its long fragile neck
against the pale flank of the giraffe.

Moon, beautiful moon, April moon,
Let me see in my sleep
the peach tree with the saffron heart,
the fish who laughs at the sleet,
the bird who, distant as a hunting horn,
gently awakens the dead
and above all, above all, the land
where there is joy, where there is light,
where sunny with primroses,
all the guns have been destroyed.
Beautiful moon, April moon.

Moon
beautiful moon, April moon,
Let me see in my sleep
the peach tree with the saffron heart,
the fish who laughs at the sleet,
the bird who, distant as a hunting horn,
gently awakens the dead
and above all, above all, the land
where there is joy, where there is light,
where sunny with primroses,
all the guns have been destroyed.
Beautiful moon, April moon,
Moon.